Astrid said, “We’re going in there, but I need to unlock it.”
She jumped out of the cabcab. The loose turbine-cover noise was much louder outside the glider—it sounded like a bean tin steadily rapped with a spoon. She also heard animals—loads of them—bawling, braying, whooping, and yinnying, and all clearly very upset.
As soon as Astrid approached the gate, she could see something was very wrong in the zoo, too. Looking north from where she stood, the lights from inside the zoo raged. She heard more animals screaming. She could barely fathom it. It was as though a missile had hit Noah’s Ark.
“Oh god,” she said.
Her hands shook as she yanked out her master key and rolled the black fence back. She felt wound up tight, buzzing, like a coil of plutonium. It wasn’t exhilaration, but more a sparkling disquiet, both radiant and distressing. ’Bout time we have a bit of action, she thought. No, don’t wish for it, that’s naff. Stay professional.
The gate was indeed locked, as it turned out. Atwell’s good, Astrid thought. Most veteran men on the constabulary just let a detail like that go these days. And that’s precisely why they’re still Parkies.
Astrid sprinted back to the cabcab and explained to the path-manager, breathing hard in the backseat, that they needed to proceed up the Broad Walk as fast as safely possible.
“We possibly have an intruder in the zoo,” Astrid said. “Someone could get hurt in there, feasibly.” There was the faintest sense of a deeper conscientiousness creeping into her mind. “You see, I’ve been off duty, and was called here by my colleague. But it’s all a bit odd, really.”
The path-manager gave a high, slightly wheezy giggle. “I didn’t know there was a zoo here,” said the path-manager. “Very, very hard to see, if you notice. You hear me before? I said there’s no glider path. I drive on my own, OK?”
It was rare and often illegal for a cabcab to be switched to manual controls.
“I know,” said Astrid, trying to stay polite. “Please. Go. You can drive without the glider path, right? Your eyes will adjust. This would be a great benefit to the police.”
“I’m not good in dark,” said the path-manager. “I try.”
“Yes,” said Astrid. “Now.”
The path-manager said, “These animals, they maybe want to play around with you.”
“Mmm. Maybe.” Astrid chuckled in a rather fake way.
The cab’s path-manager looked straight ahead. He had begun to slouch into the path-manager’s side door a bit, like he was preparing for a long night, but he’d sat up straight. Up to now he had been working his holo-controls, obviously taking care of other riders on other routes, but he dropped that now.
The path-manager was speeding, the headlamps gathering great, moving bowls of green park scenery as the glider shot along. The pale patches on plane trees along the Broad Walk shone white, despite the darkness of the park, and became an oscillating flash in Astrid’s periphery. She felt disorientated and dizzy. She hunched forward on the seat, looking out for the signs of Atwell’s Paladin pandaglider.
“Sorry, friend, please, slow down, please,” said Astrid. She spoke in a stern tone she had not used before. The path-manager slammed on the brakes. Astrid bucked forward. The path-manager gave one of his funny laughs again.
She said, “Thanks.”
As they were sitting there, the glider’s small color-charge engines ticking with heat, Astrid spotted the taillamps of the Paladin, just a hundred meters or so in front of them on the walk. If the path-manager hadn’t stopped when he had, they might have rear-ended Atwell.
“Just a little farther,” said Astrid. “Please, slowly.” The cabcab started gliding forward, and the path-manager banged the brakes again.
“What the devil’s wrong?” said Astrid.
“Wawi!” the path-manager said. “Wawi!”
Astrid looked out, saw the creatures, and nearly hit the ceiling of the cabcab. There were five of them, right in front of the Citro?n. They just stood there, stock-still apart from the flicking of the great triangles of tawny fur that was their ears. Their snouts weren’t as pointy as those of the foxes she’d see sometimes at night on her back garden wall in Haggerston, and they stood taller, yet they looked similar. The main difference was an unnervingly adorable, sloe-eyed expression on all their faces that was pure jackal.
“Wawi!”
“What’s wawi?” asked Astrid. “What do you mean?”
The headlamps had made the jackals’ eyes glow a hellish phosphorous yellow-white.